The Cloud

The moving of all aspects of the technology service into the cloud, including software as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service.

What’s it about?

What is ‘the cloud’ and ‘a cloud-based service’?

Where we once considered the size of a computer’s hard drive on which our programs and data could be stored a critical part of any purchase decision, those things are increasingly delivered from “the cloud”.

The term ‘cloud’ originates from the symbol used by network engineers when they needed to represent the Internet. It has now become synonymous with the Internet itself. A cloud-based service is anything that is made available to a device with an internet connection, delivered by somebody else’s computing resource. We typically think of devices such as smartphones and computers connecting to cloud services, but increasingly devices ranging from watches and other wearables through to appliances from light bulbs to cars and a raft of sensors like cameras will be cloud-connected to form the ‘Internet of Things’.

Giant companies such as Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google have most the Cloud market and have the scale to build colossal data centres. An increasing range of smaller, specialised providers deliver services built on their own or on these companies’ platforms. Services are delivered for free in some cases, or, more commonly, as a paid subscription.

SaaS or IaaS?

Software as a Service (SaaS), in which software applications are run from data centres rather than on individual computers or servers, has become the dominant model for using the cloud to deliver services to schools. Examples include Google’s G Suite, Microsoft’s Office 365, student management systems like eTap and Edge, and Xero’s accounting system. Merely using somebody else’s infrastructure to run the same services that used to be on a school’s server — known as Infrastructure as a Service (IAAS) — does not leverage enough of the benefits of cloud computing to make it worthwhile for most schools, because there is still too much technical expertise required to implement and maintain IAAS solutions. SaaS will inevitably render school servers redundant.

What examples of this can I see?

Schools are embracing using the cloud because it enables them to care less about keeping technology running but instead to focus on what can be done with the technology to benefit learners. But, to continue growing the uptake of the cloud, there are some challenges to overcome:

• Performance - How can more demanding tasks such as multimedia production, data manipulation, and graphic design be made possible without expensive end-user devices running specialist software? 
• Identity - How can staff and students have fewer usernames and passwords to gain access to cloud services whilst more surely verifying their identity?
  Security - Can schools trust cloud service providers to secure their data? Are schools following best practices themselves when it comes to security of cloud services?
• Ubiquity - Can the devices and connectivity needed to access cloud services be provided with the quantity, ease, reliability, capability and price that makes them available to all?
• Privacy - Can we be confident that our privacy is being respected as data is transferred and stored in the cloud?
• Portability - How can we ensure data is able to flow as students and teachers transition between schools or as formats and technologies shift?
• Technical support - Can technical support change from being focussed on configuring and maintaining infrastructure to being focused on integrating cloud services so that technicians are tasked with bringing together discrete services rather than trying to create a whole ecosystem?